Queen Mab

I say that no one is satiated. I say this with much urgency,
but this is a lie and nothing in text is earnest.

Absolutely No Drinking.

Until today, we were staying above a bar named
The Paris
employing only Irish men
who pour Redbreast a little shorter than I’d prefer.
In New York, I suffer my posture
and I want to let everyone know I drink whiskey,
and the long walks twist into delerium
and we get lost
and we try out both keys in every door
underneath a section of Hell’s Kitchen with only
a paper covered Modelo.
We return to the apartment above the bar where
some of the time I talk out my tired stories,
unknowing of whether I have retold them even here.
They were stories coarsely tuned to help me to escape,
but our memories are scattered all over, yes,
even here.
The ringer is how
I keep hoping that asking my father if he
needs any coffee
makes me seem more an Adult
and less a little girl.

Squashing Season

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings—always darker, emptier, simpler.

— Nietzsche

derailment,
then the subsequent pacification
led me to here and without
saving for the swim back

underneath this year
not a question,
but a surprise:
I love a love, not a man

Education

“One should say before sleeping, ‘I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knees and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.”

--From an essay by W. B. Yeats

Education


The things I know about are
my plain, little hands.  A pair,
and they spell things into the empty draft
like Singer,
rabidly,
seriously,
hoping my deaf and mute
friends will someday take the time
to hear my hungry/clanging message:
“                                              “

This is terrible.

I am so very afraid of everything I own
and of how it all owns me.

The cabin in my thoughts
is empty
save for white linens
and milled soap
my dog
my books
a shelf
shade
relief
snow.

This poem isn't soft. Instead it's spongy
and absorbent of what I can't say.
I would have rather it been soft.

Or even angry,
that he should know that he
could have talked to me about his
sadness.


I fear my own belongings,
my feelings, my pens.

I will write to you
secretly here,
but please don't tell anyone,
please don't look away.

ROUGH DRAFT, OBVIOUSLY

I would like to be small.  I want to fit inside
of a thimble.  I want my guts to be accessible
with only slight pressure. 

I would like to pass my time in some other way.

I would like to file away the parts of myself that
mimic my mother.  I want them categorized,
so neatly organized until I am no reflection than
that of a moon: cloistered, motherless, alone.

How strange, to realize all at once how much you are truly wasting your life.

STOP
WAITING
FOR
THINGS
TO
HAPPEN
GO
MAKE
THEM
HAPPEN

I don't remember how to write a poem.

1st Ode

When the young die, there are no estate sales.
There are just balloons excreting helium. They waltz with
streamers across the bottom of a room.

Whenever I die, I'll hibernate. I eat in preparation for this.
Whenever I'm dead, I'll still worry about dying.
I'll still think I didn't wind up,
didn't lick you enough,
didn't crack when I was sad.

Monthly

my body is always buzzing

my eyes are cold and bulging from my sockets like varnished golf balls

my swatches of skin color don't hide the ingrown hairs

how I long to be dark like the girls from high school

how I would imagine them naked in front of their mirrors

cupping their ripe and perfect breasts

their brown skin stretched perfectly over their bones

I could see a scalpel incise anywhere on their body and

their skin so soft it must splay open like a flower

my vagina does not allow itself to be touched

it sends messages to my body with such quickness and swelling

I truly am in the image of God

my reflection is as sterile and barren as the tallest whitest figure

and my fertility was gaping and hungry on the screen

until I strung it around my fork like a noodle

under your blanket in the dark

please, just leave me alone to read all of my newstand magazines

they are truly preparing me for my later trip to the parade in Hell

I'll see you there with my head on a stick and my baby ghost in my arms

Mortimer

The different rooms of this house host different parties. I invite ants and their ant ghosts up to bed. The dog used to lick them up like treats. Little black bones on his tongue.

Since the dog moved out, I stopped moving. I sold all of my books and so now my room echoes like the hallways on an ant farm. When he would fall asleep, I would plan out what else to purge.

To You Who Keeps Me Here Just For the Hell Of It

I gifted my dog to the new you.

'Clink' and then a monster.  Your eyes at my back like my bedroom and sisters.

A spidery kit of legs wraps around you, and your eyes, again, at my back.

I can see my dainty little sister on her cigarette break at work,

So I think thoughts that you can see.

All her fragile little limbs encased, gingerly smoking and thinking.

I, Too Am Worried About the Environment

Our theories for loving steer us toward our partners.
Our fancy plans are left to fritter.
This socks the science into us as our partners size and weigh.

The wreaths of excuses we make are too large to fasten.
Also, we have no money.

The car industry will die and our dates will no longer be able to drive us around.
We will be forced cross on dark paths.
We will need to rendezvous while we eat.
We will suck the juice right out of the fruit.

Ode to New Handwriting (and Bonnie Prince Billy)

There were dogs all over the city.
I bolted an arrow to the air.
They barked at the sound of my metaphysical drilling.

Sometimes I try to yank my arrow towards me,
but mostly it chuckles and I walk by. Mostly
I pretend I wasn't walking by for it.

The people we see in our dreams, they're dreaming, too:
people on the bus, the little girl staring
at my tights, the
dogs, all of the people I've had sex with.

I slept with another woman, once.
We drank Hot Toddy and almost fell asleep in a movie.
The anticipation was unreal. I had always known.

Her lips were too soft. My hands, for the
life of them, couldn't figure out what to do next.
I held them very still. I waited
for it to be over. I pretended to be asleep.

The next morning, I was found ill at foul
news of the crossword. Saturday is actually
the hardest. Sunday is just a big Thursday.

Heavy Petting

All of the people in life, they're courting. They chase bosoms
and fondness and I hate to watch as they bend to pick up the waste.

All of the people in my life, they forgive me. They are patient
and feed me and I spoil for it as they kiss, grope, copulate.

I want to be immediate with everyone, as intimate as their courter.
I want to nestle, then eat a breakfast over our mutual anguish.